We have translated the following article from the June 8 issue of Rouge, the weekly paper of the Ligue Communiste (Communist League), the French section of the Fourth International.]
The voters in Ceylon ousted the United National party (UNP) and swept a so-called left coalition to power. The UNP is the party of the compradore bourgeoisie, that is, the part of the native bourgeoisie directly tied to British imperialism. It was the beneficiary of the formal independence that came in the wake of the indepen- 610
dence granted to neighboring India in 1949. The UNP did not wage any struggle for national freedom.
The removal of the UNP from power resulted from a mass radicalization on the island, which has been expressed for more than a year by an almost uninterrupted succession of powerful strikes and demonstrations of various types. This radicalization has occurred in the context of the war in Southeast Asia and a mounting crisis in India.
The victors in the election were a coalition of parties. The largest, the Sri Lanka Freedom party (SLFP) led by Mrs. Bandaranaike, represents the national bourgeoisie.
This party wants to achieve a certain level of economic development. Up till now, the agricultural sector, with its tea and rubber plantations, has been dominant.
The SLFP emerged from a split in the UNP in the 1950s. It won electoral support among the petty-bourgeois masses in the countryside and the new Buddhist, Sinhalese intelligentsia, which differs from the old intelligentsia coming from the big bourgeoisie and educated in the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The SLEP exploited the rivalries between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, who make up the Ceylonese population.
But what gives the SLFP its main strength is the workers parties which blocked with it in the victorious coalition. These include, of course, the Communist party, whose policy is identical with that of the other pro- Moscow parties. But in Ceylon the party that exerts the strongest influence over the working class is the Lanka Sama Samaja party (LSSP). It won three times as many seats in the elections as the CP. The press refers to it under the label "dissident Trotskyists." So it is worth going back over its history a little.
In the 1930s young intellectuals of bourgeois origin introduced Communist ideas into Ceylon and began to organize the working masses politically and in unions; first of all, the workers in the port of Colombo. This is the way the LSSP was formed.
Internal struggles developed within the LSSP in conjunction with the great problems of the revolution in the colonial countries. It was questions such as these at the time of the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 that split the Bolshevik party into the Left Opposition and the Stalin-Bukharin bloc. The majority of the LSSP leadership came out in favor of the theory of permanent revolution and expelled Keuneman and those who were to form the Communist party.
During the war, because of the alliance between British imperialism and the USSR, the CP ceased all antiimperialist propaganda. But the leaders of the LSSP continued to campaign on this question, and were imprisoned. They managed to escape and participated in the revolutionary movement in India. When they returned to their country they had the support of the majority of the Sinhalese workers. The LSSP joined the Fourth International, becoming its Ceylonese section.
But after a period of struggle which reached its peak in the hartal [general strike] of August 12, 1953, the leadership of the LSSP began to degenerate. There were various causes for this, which cannot be gone into here. Many and long efforts by the Fourth International failed to stem this process.
The formation of the SLFP, and especially its early electoral successes in 1956, completely disoriented the LSSP. In 1964 the majority of the LSSP decided for the first time to participate in a coalition under the leadership of Mrs. Bandaranaike. On this June 22, 1970
occasion the Fourth International expelled those who by this action had betrayed its revolutionary program and behaved like vulgar opportunists.
The first experience with the coalition government was fleeting and ended in a fiasco. One of the most outstanding capitulations of the LSSP occurred on the nationality question, not only at the expense of the Tamils but also of hundreds of thousands of Indians who had been brought in long ago to work on the plantations and who had no rights. But in the absence of an alternative leadership, after a while the reactionary policy of the UNP set the masses moving back toward the left coalition.
The betrayal of the LSSP did not extend to the entire party. A minority formed the Lanka Sama Samaja party (Revolutionary) and in this way carried on the Ceylonese section of the Fourth International. The organization thus created has gone through difficult times. Its main leader, Comrade Bala Tampoe, devoted his efforts primarily to the trade-unior area and became the general secretary of the Ceylon Mercantile Union.
In the recent period, tharts to activity which often exceeded the normal functions of trade unions, this organization became the most important union in the country. By the impulse that it has given to workers struggles in the recent period, it forced the UNP government twice to give up attempts to impose martial law. During the electoral campaign, the Ceylonese section of the Fourth International denounced the trap represented by the class collaborationist policy of the parties associated with the SLFP. It called on the masses to be vigilant and to prepare for revolutionary struggles.
For a certain period the victory of the left coalition may reinforce reformist and parliamentary illusions. But the way in which the masses greeted the election results, by physically attacking the proimperialist institutions, indicates that it is unlikely we will see a repetition of what happened when the first coalition government failed.
Since the masses will want to go further, the proimperialist forces are not likely to want to take the road of new elections. There has been talk of a military coup several times in the last two years.
The SF LP-LSSP-CP coalition came to power with a program including nationalizations, among other things and the newspaper of the banks printing plants. There is also mention of a certain level of supervision of the plantations. The new government will find itself subjected to imperialist pressures (the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England, because the island belongs to the sterling zone, etc.). Before long, reformism in this "Switzerland of Asia" will face its moment of truth.
The LSSP(R) itself will face a de cisive test. Its numerical strength, as I have said, is still small, although just recently it has been making gains among the students. But through its secretary Bala Tampoe, the main union leader in the country, it has an important influence in the working class.
With the support of the entire Fourth International, the Ceylonese Trotskyists — who are not compromised by association with the SLFP-have the task of warning the masses of the island to be vigilant and not to let themselves be duped by empty phrases of the ministers and members of parliament, to rely solely on their own action, to organize to win by direct action what the new government cannot give them.
In this way, the experience of the new government will serve to clarify the minds of the masses and orient them toward establishing a government of the workers and the rural masses. Such a government will put Ceylon at the side of the Vietnamese and the other peoples of Asia who are struggling against imperialism and capitalism and for the construction of a socialist society.
DDTea Time
According to the June 6 Japan Times
. "concentration of DDT insec- Weekly, a ticide about 10 times above the permissible amount stipulated in the Food Sanitation Law had been detected in green tea leaves produced last year in Shizuoka Prefecture, it was learned last week."
The government issued a reassuring statement, however, pointing out that the effect on health of such an amount of DDT in tea leaves "is considered slight because the concentration is reduced to a negligible percentage when actually
"9 drunk..
When Is a 'Trotskyite' Not a "Trotskyite'?
How the 'Daily World' Reports Events in Ceylon
The May 27 elections in Ceylon that brought the bourgeois Sri Lanka Freedom party and its "left" partners to power was a cause for celebration in the columns of the Daily World, the voice of the Communist party of the United States. At the same time it revealed certain difficulties for the American CP in light of its past coverage of events in Ceylon.
Under the headline "Left wins in Ceylon," the May 29 Daily World "explained" the participation of the Ceylonese CP in a bourgeois government:
"Intensified U.S. exploitation of Cey- Ion steadily widened the gap between rich and poor and led to immense suffering, especially in the countryside. The Communist Party of Ceylon joined with Mrs. Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka Freedom Party and other groups on the understanding that the United Left Front they formed would work decisively to end this state of affairs."
How a capitalist government is going to "decisively"
end the state of affairs created by capitalism in Ceylon is left to the imagination. Specific measures that are mentioned include nationalization of the banks-undoubtedly a progressive measure, but one that has hardly closed the "gap between rich and poor" in India, where it was carried out by the capitalist regime of Indira Gandhi only to be declared unconstitutional by the courts.
But what is most curious about this passage is the reference to "other groups" in the United Left Front. In fact, there is only one other "group" in the coalition and that is the Lanka Sama Samaja party (LSSP), which won 19 seats in comparison to the 6 won by the pro-Moscow CP. The difficulty for the Daily World is that in the past it has insisted on labeling this centrist party as "Trotskyite" in order to smear the world Trotskyist movement with responsibility for its actions. Now that the three-party coalition has come to power, the Daily World finds it embarrassing to tell its readers that the Ceylonese CP is in a coalition with a "Trotskyite" party. In the Stalinist demonology this 612
is far worse than a mere alliance with the bourgeoisie.
An example of the Daily World's usual stance can be found in its handling of the port workers' strike in Colombo earlier this year. The strike began December 12 and ended two months later on February 12. It was organized and led by a joint front of seven port unions, in which the most prominent was the Ceylon Mercantile Union. The general secretary of the CMU is P. Bala Tampoe, the leading Ceylonese Trotskyist, who is also the secretary of the Lanka Sama Samaja party (Revolutionary)
[LSSP(R)], the Ceylonese section the Fourth International.
The strike was defeated because unions controlled by the United National party and by the Lanka Sama Samaja party, the coalition partner of the CP, acted as scabs, helping the military in its strikebreaking action.
(The LSSP was expelled from the Fourth International in 1964 precisely because the majority of its leadership joined the bourgeois coalition with Mrs. Bandaranaike. The LSSP(R) refused to join the coalition.)
How did the Daily World report the strike? In its April 9 issue, two months after the strike was over, when there had been plenty of time to verify the facts, the Daily World ran the following story:
"Cargo was moved, according to the conservative Hong Kong publication, 'Far East Economic Review, by 'Trotskyite-dominated unions, with aid from military and naval prsonnel [sic].'" The headline did not bother to suggest this was a report from a dubious source but announced flatly, "Trotskyites break strikes in Ceylon."
And this whole falsification was datelined "Colombo" to give it the appearance of authenticity. The issue of Far Eastern Economic Review, to get the name straight, was that of February 19, 1970, picked up and quoted by the Daily World, without giving its date, almost two months late as "news."
It might be noted for the benefit of the editors of the Daily World that the Far Eastern Economic Review in its May 28 report on the eve of the Ceylon elections referred to the Lanka
Sama Samaja party simply as "Titoist."
Finally on June 5 the Daily World indicated the identity of the "other groups" in the Bandaranaike coalition. William J. Pomeroy, writing from London, said:
"The SLFP's coalition partners were Ceylon's Communist Party, which won six seats, and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party, a party identified as Trotskyist but which has frequently acted in unity with the Communists, which took 19 seats." (Emphasis added.)
Pomeroy at least indicated that he understood the function of the two "left" participants in the capitalist government- although he plainly approved.
"In the coalition," he said, "the latter two parties guaranteed the support of the trade unions and of intellectual circles."
500 Died at Tlatelolco
The London Observer and the Cleveland Plain Dealer have estimated that as many as 500 persons were killed by government troops in the Tlatelolco massacre in Mexico City on October 2, 1968. Observer correspondent Colin McGlashan, writing from Mexico City in a dispatch reprinted in the June 7 Plain Dealer, de scribed the rise of the Mexican student movement two years ago:
"The student movement of 1968 started with fights and rivalry between two schools brutally broken up by the granaderos, Mexico's riot police. The students forgot their differences to build a movement around police brutality and the laws against 'social dissolution,' traditionally used to jail independent trade union leaders and other dissenters.
"Within three months several hundred thousand people were marching down the Paseo de la Reforma for the first time since the revolution. The Olympic Games were due to start: the government sent in heavily armed troops. Officially, 39 were killed, reliable estimates are that 500 students and bystanders died in a hail of bullets. Thousands more were arrested: at least 100 are still jailed without trial.
"The movement was smashed. ... The grievances behind it survive and fester, and they're not confined to the young. The generation gap is narrower here. The students' parents shared their concerns."
Mexico
Gershenson, 8 Others Given Long Terms
Mexico City
On May 16 Judge Rubén Montes de Oca of the Mexico City third district court sentenced nine political prisoners and their lawyer to long jail terms and heavy fines. The prisoners had been confined in Ward N of Lecumberri preventive jail awaiting sentencing. One of the nine, Antonio Gershenson Tatelov, had been jailed three years before sentence was passed.
Gershenson was also handed the harshest penalties of the group. He was given twenty-five years on charges of attempting to dynamite the Colombian embassy in Mexico City and attempting to blow up an electric tower in Teotihuacán on September 1, 1968.
This savage sentence was not based on very strong evidence. Gershenson has been in prison since 1967. Furthermore, there was only one reported attempt to blow up an electric tower on September 1, 1968, and that was at Santa María Chiconautla, not Teotihuacan.
Since the massive arrests of students and radicals following the massacre of Tlatelolco in October 1968, the corrupt Mexican courts seem not to require very credible evidence to put opponents of the regime behind bars.
The lawyer for the nine political prisoners, Juan Ortega Arenas, was sentenced to three years and six months for "conspiracy."
Charges against the nine included conspiracy, criminal association, destruction of property by explosives, and inflicting personal injuries. In addition to long jail terms, the prisoners were also subjected to crushing financial penalties, both fines and reparations for damage they allegedly caused.
The sharp clashes that resulted from police attacks on student demonstrators in 1968 caused considerableproperty damage. For example, in the first confrontations riot troops shot down the door of a high school with a bazooka.
As individuals, the defendants were given the following sentences: Justino Marinez, thirteen years and a 2,000- peso fine (12.50 pesos equal US$1]; Antonio Gershenson, 5,000-pesos fine in addition to his prison sentence; Alberto Reyna de la Cruz, eighteen years and 2,000 pesos; Mario Rechy Montiel, eighteen years and 2,000 pesos; Luis Enrique Gerardo del Toro Najera, eighteen years and 2,000 pesos; Francisco Luna Leal, seventeen years and 2,000 pesos; Enrique Condes Lana, seventeen years and 2,000 pesos; Fabio Erazo Barbosa, twenty years, 3,000 pesos; Gerardo Peleaz Ramos, fifteen years and 3,000 pesos.
As a group, the defendants and their lawyer were required to pay 90,100 pesos damages- 4,800 pesos to the Secretariat of Public Education; 4,800 pesos to the Autonomous National University; 5,500 pesos to the Department of the Federal District; 60,000 pesos to the Secretariat of National Defense; and 15,000 pesos to the owner of a bus destroyed during the agitation.
Raw Frame-up in Mexico City
Solorzano and Segura Given 30 Years in Prison
Mexico City
Two young Guatemalan political exiles received sentences of thirty years in prison here April 28. They were convicted of killing a Mexican soldier and stealing his weapons.
On July 4, 1968, the two youths- Mario René Solórzano Aldana and Carlos Rolando Segura Medina, both twenty-two years old-took refuge in the Mexican embassy in Guatemala City.
The Mexican press did not report why the youths were forced to seek asylum. However, counterrevolutionary terrorism has been on the rise in the recent period in the tiny Central American republic. Hundreds of persons have been murdered by the police, the army, and ultrarightist gangs, many for nothing more than being "soft on Communism," in the opinion of the killers. The bodies of numerous victims have been found dismembered June 22, 1970
and showing evidence of the most sadistic tortures.
On July 6 the two young Guatemalans were formally granted political asylum. They remained in the embassy until they were able to get into Mexico on August 6.
A little more than a month later, on September 30, the two Guatemalans were arrested by the Mexican judicial police and charged with murder, criminal association, and robbery. They were tortured for ten days until they finally "confessed" to killing a soldier on the grounds of the Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City. The murder occurred on July 4, the same day Solórzano and Segura sought asylum in the Mexican embassy in Guatemala City.
The two youths were taken to Lecumberri prison October 9. Segura was unconscious when he arrived, according to the other political prisoners held in the prison. He remained in a coma for seven days. His heart stopped five times. Solórzano was kept in solitary confinement for his first forty-five days in prison.
The Guatemalans were accused of killing Private Efraín Ramírez Santoyo in order to get his M-2 rifle and the hand grenades he was carrying. The police claimed that they found several bombs as well as the weapons taken from Ramirez in the youths' apartment in the Miguel Alemán building on the Avenida Coyoacán.
The police statements were summarized in the Mexico City daily Excelsior April 29: "Here [in Mexico] the two Guatemalans devoted themselves to carrying out attacks and robberies in order to get guns and money to return to their country and join the 'guerrillas.'
"The private Efrain Ramírez Santoyo was murdered July 4, 1968, in the Palacio de los Deportes, where he was on guard duty.
"Solórzano, Segura Medina, and the third person arrived there in a Ford Valiant, which they had stolen in Puebla. Threatening the private with their pistols, they ordered him to turn over his M-2 rifle. But when he re sisted they shot him to death and fled with the gun.
"Thev explained that they only want.
"They explained that they only wanted the weapon and the cartridges because they needed arms to go and fight in their country. They also planned to attack some arsenals."
The Excelsior reporter made a feeble attempt to link the Guatemalans with the Mexican student movement that started up after police attacked demonstrations in Mexico City on July 26, 1968: "The two defendants denied taking part in the student disturbances which began precisely in July 1968. However, they said that they were interested in all the problems of Mexican students."
When the judge of the Third Criminal Court of the Federal District Rubén Montes de Oca pronounced sentence on the Guatemalans April 28, they had already been in prison nineteen months. The Mexican constitution requires that prisoners be tried within the period of one year. Moreover, according to the constitution, a prison warrant must be issued within seventytwo hours after an arrest. The two political refugees were held for eighteen days without a warrant.
The question remains why the Mexican police did not also persuade Solórzano and Segura to "confess" playing a role in the massive student and popular protests of 1968. "Foreign agitators" have been eagerly hunted for to explain the conflict. Credibility apparently was not a major consideration in the case of the two Guatemalans. Documentary evidence that they were in the Mexican embassy in Guatemala City when the crime they were accused of occurred was simply ignored.
Perhaps the extent of the "confessions" was limited by the physical endurance of the two youths. By the time he was taken to Lecumberri, Segura at least was in no condition to make any further "admissions." We cannot know what shape Solórzano was in since he was held incommunicado for forty-five days after his arrival
A more important question, in view of the reported killing of Guatemalan
Peru guerrillas by Mexican border troops May 16, is whether the Diaz Ordaz regime is assisting the bloody repression in Guatemala.